I am, as ever, behind on my WIP tags. Thank you so much to @missfortunetherogue @lilhumanoid @gortashsrighthand @archduchessgortash and @emmy-and-the-tieflings. If I forget someone I’m really sorry.
So the premise of self care WIPs, I gather, is to share something you’re writing that you’re proud of..I am proud of nothing I did this week, because most of is wildly violent gothic AA smut for an art trade (okay, it is really good….but private, so…)
So, instead I give you very jealous Gale and Lily, sorting shit out… or not. Who knows?
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Gale set his cup down with exquisite care on its saucer. “Well,” he said softly. “There you are.” His eyes moved over Lily first, swift and searching, then flicked to Astarion.
“You took the back stairs,” Gale said.
Lily straightened. “I did not wish to wake anyone.”
“No,” he said, still looking at her. “I see that you were trying to be discreet. You might at least have told me.”
Lily held his gaze. “You were asleep.”
Astarion gave a faint, humorless smile. “Allegedly.”
Gale’s gaze rested on Astarion for one sharp second. “And was it worth it?”
Astarion’s expression did not change. “Was what worth what?”
“The secrecy,” Gale said. “The risk. The charming little pre-dawn expedition.”
Lily answered before Astarion could. “Yes.”
It was only for a heartbeat, but Lily saw it plainly: surprise first, then something more painful, as though her answer had struck not a fresh injury but one long pressed, long hidden, and never tended.
Astarion’s gaze flicked between them. Whatever he read there made his mouth curve in the faintest approximation of amusement.
“Well,” he drawled, brushing an invisible fleck of dust from his sleeve, “this seems an admirable moment for me to freshen up. I am in want of a wash, a change of clothes, and perhaps several centuries of not being in the Szarr Palace.”
He rested one hand lightly against the doorframe, pale and elegant despite the fatigue dragging at the edges of him.
“Do continue,” he said. Then he slipped past them and away toward his room.
Gale did not move. His face had already composed itself again, but Lily knew that look now—it was the same look he had when Elminster had come to camp.
Lily lifted her chin. “Yes.”
His mouth tightened. “How very fortunate that at least one of us is certain.”
“No.” His voice remained quiet, which made it harder to bear. “No, I should like to understand. Truly. You disappear before dawn with him, come back by the back stairs as though you had hoped not to be noticed, and when I ask whether it was worth the secrecy, the risk, all of it—your answer is simply yes.”
“You know I do not require sleep,” she said. “You know Astarion and I often watch the sunrise together. You seem to be looking for an argument, Gale. I can provide one if you like, but I think it would be best to have it outside.”
Gale held her gaze. “Outside,” he repeated softly. “How thoughtful. Then the others need not hear how little place I was meant to have in any of this.”
Lily turned away, moving through the passage toward the roof terrace of the inn.
Gale followed after a moment, not hurriedly, but with the same measured restraint he brought to every perilous moment. The door to the terrace gave a soft protest as he opened it.
Dawn had begun in earnest by then. The city below lay washed in pearl and thinning blue, its roofs still damp with night, the harbor beyond it a sheet of dull silver waiting for the sun. The air was cold enough to bite.
Lily stood with one hand braced on the stone balustrade, her cloak stirring faintly in the breeze.
Gale stopped a few paces behind her. “Very well,” he said. “We are outside.”
She did not turn. “You are angry.”
“There’s that keen elven perception.”
“Don’t be petty.” At last she looked back at him over her shoulder. “Can you, for just one moment, allow that this may have nothing to do with you?”
Gale’s expression changed very little, but something in it hardened.
“Nothing to do with me,” he repeated.
“Remarkable.” He folded his hands behind his back, a gesture so controlled it bordered on violent. “Then I am at a loss as to why I was expected to sit up half the night wondering whether you meant to come back at all.”
Lily turned fully then, the wind tugging a pale strand of hair across her cheek. “I did come back.”
“That is not the comfort you seem to think it is.”
“I did not ask you to stay awake. I did not ask for anything. This is—”
“Elven business?” Gale cut in. The words were quiet enough to be mistaken for calm. “None of my concern?”
“You said that two nights ago,” he continued. “I confess I had hoped the phrase might have soured on repetition.”
Lily’s chin lifted. “This is about Astarion.”
“Yes,” Gale said. “I know. You two have made that abundantly clear.”
Lily stared at him. “What do you think is happening here, Gale? Is this jealousy? Do you doubt that you hold the whole of my heart? Or am I obliged to remain constantly at your side while you moon over Karsus and that ridiculous book?”
Gale went very still. “I see,” he said. “So now we are contemptuous of each other’s obsessions as well.”
For one suspended moment Lily simply stared at him.
Then something in her gave way. “Obsession?” she said.
The word came out sharp enough to cut.
She took a step toward him, her composure cracking at last. “Is that what you think this is?”
Gale’s expression shifted, though not yet into retreat. “Lily—”
“No.” Her voice rose despite herself, then dropped again as she remembered the sleeping rooms below. The restraint only made it shake.
The dawn wind caught at her hair and cloak. She hardly felt it.
“I am traveling with a Sharran and a Drow, neither of whom I have put to the blade, as I ought if I am to call myself worthy of my inheritance,” she said. “You are chasing the ghost of Karsus through half the city with Mystra’s breath still on your neck. Every road before us seems to end in some ancient disaster clawing its way back to life.” Her mouth tightened. “And Astarion was taken in the night because I was away with you.”
Uno reverse tag for anyone who wants one plus @mellybaggins @rdekarios @r3drozebud @dr4gonwriter @kcwriter-blog and @alliskit
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